


Time Enough

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, First Time, Light Angst, POV Alternating, POV Rose, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Time Travel, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 18:25:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2860763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She ached to go to him—physically ached, so intense and commanding was her need to entwine her fingers in his, to wrap her arms inside his jacket and burrow into the Doctor's comfort and love. To feel him solid and alive again… and whole and real and alive… and alive… and so beautifully, wondrously, fantastically alive!  It was wrong. That it felt so right terrified her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [develish1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/develish1/gifts).



> The action takes place sometime after "Journey's End" in Rose's time line, but in her original universe.
> 
> Written for the 2014 Seasonal ficathon on bad_wolf_rising.livejournal.com This is for develish1 because she seemed so wistful and winsome when she asked if anyone was interested in a ficathon. PIcture prompts are at the end of the story. One thing more: I probably should thank Heinlein.

 

Time Enough

 

 

 

Rose Tyler used the dimension cannon twice to cross the Void from Pete’s world and track down the Time Lord. The first time, the stars were going out and she feared the universe was ending. The second time, the final time, was when the universe did truly end: seven days, exactly, from the hour that she buried the Doctor.

Clever and impulsive and maybe a little bit crazy with watching her Doctor actually die after she'd seen him through a regeneration, an almost-regeneration, and that last _whatever_ that had given him to her, Rose stole into Torchwood and nicked the cannon. She attached and engaged the transcendental stabilizer fail-safes her husband had been working on, set the device to home in on the TARDIS, and jumped. She got back to her original universe; but she was out a few miles, a few years. She attributed it to the Doctor's inimitable influence more than the untried upgrades, not sure if she should laugh or cry.

Recognition hit Rose immediately along with a sense that she had stepped into a well known though somewhat misremembered old story. It was Christmas Eve on the estate a long time ago, before her broken romantic of a mum became an unapologetic scold. Long before Jackie Tyler became Pete Tyler's wife again, with a fortune, a mansion, a second child, and a sky full of dirigibles.

Looking at it with mature objectivity, the flat was a smaller, dingier place than she'd remembered, filled with dented, mismatched furniture that had been crowded together more than usual to give the tenant Christmas tree a bit of space and presence. Viewed through the concaving lens of Rose's grief, it was an unexpected gift: a haven and sanctuary for the woman who had destroyed unspeakably evil obscenities in two universes, but had found and then lost the core of her own personal universe one time more than she could endure.

For the woman with no hand to hold, no fingers to entwine with hers, and no one left to belong to and to belong to her, it was reaffirmation of her once-upon-a-time miracle of unconditional love.

There was scant of the customary tangible Christmas elements to point to that would identify an abundant yuletide celebration; Christmases in Jackie Tyler's flat had been softly, poignantly sweet, always holding their breaths and hoping to be nicely surprised by next year. But the warmth of Jackie's love suffused the room, weaving together the seasonal fragrances of fir and brandied cranberries with nutmeg, cinnamon, chocolate, and the real vanilla Jackie bought for Rose's birthday cakes and the Christmas cookies.

The Christmas tree was decorated with salt-dough handprints, baked and painted and dated, and placed with careful detail to Jackie's daughter's chronology, along with Gram's glass ornaments and stars made out of wrapping papers thickened with glue and hung from ribbons that Jackie had accumulated over the past year.

Upon the sofa table, on a fancy crocheted doily, Jackie's prized Royal Dalton plate was bedecked with a six-pointed star fashioned out of the six largest, roundest, most perfectly matched chocolate chip cookies the Tyler women had made. A bottle of good ale stood in the center. Their note to Father Christmas was propped up against the bottle.

A pair of Peter Tyler's best burgundy-and-lavender-striped black dress socks hung off the top of the pass-through to the kitchen. Jackie's and Rose's names had been stitched on in fancy needlepoint and the toes dipped in glitter. That year Rose's stocking bulged with dime store make-up, sparkly nail polish, and a little gift box of shiny new £1 coins; Jackie's contained a tiny bottle of Chanel No. 5 parfum, purchased on special with Gram's help.

Holiday candles flamed quirkily in the draughty room, throwing their light like perfidious kisses over the silver-tinselled boughs of the Christmas tree, Father Christmas's sweet and boozy bribe, the stockings that brought Pete Tyler home, in a way, for Christmas, the big blue box crowded up to the sofa, and the tall thin man in black studiously polishing a red bicycle as carefully as if it were one of the crown jewels.

_Who says I'm not? Red bicycle when you were twelve._ The beloved northern baritone danced through Rose's memory along with the image of laughing eyes and a delighted grin—her Doctor, chuckling and ebullient, drunk on the knowledge that he had just succeeded in keeping death away. Rose bit her bottom lip shut, restraining a sound of emotion too complicated to examine.

Her hand pressed against her heart as if to constrain it from falling to pieces—were there any of it left to break further. She ached to go to him—physically ached, so intense and commanding was her need to entwine her fingers in his, to wrap her arms inside his jacket and burrow into the Doctor's comfort and love. To feel him solid and alive again… and whole and real and alive… and alive… and so beautifully, wondrously, fantastically alive!

It was dangerous and Rose couldn't begin to imagine what the consequences could be.

It was wrong.

That it felt so right terrified her back into a solid lucidity that the Doctor—every one of him—would have expected of her from the get-go, damn him.

So thoroughly pre-occupied that he hadn't sensed her arrival, the Time Lord carried on polishing the bike and talking to it gaily. It gave Rose's eyes the chance to feast on the Doctor's lithe beauty as his muscles moved beneath soft leather and stiff denim. His bum was as perfect as she'd remembered, his back as long and lean. His long, sensual hands were obscured; Rose pictured them busy stroking the bike the way he'd stroked the alien instrument in van Statten's bunker, then she imagined them stroking her exactly the same. She delighted again at the ears that bookended his head; his short hair, dark and somewhat fuzzed, that had always dared her fingers to run through with seductive intent; that bit of naked neck that teased her lips to caress and nibble around to a truly lickable, suckable throat. She wished she could see the kind and knowing eternity burning within his ancient miracle eyes.

How she missed the Doctor's eyes! Always brilliant. Sometimes sombre. Sometimes impish—and these blue eyes could be even more impish than the brown— and too often unable to mask totally all the pain and loneliness he'd sentenced himself to carry. Sometimes his eyes were firm, angry, condescending, even cold and scarily alien. Even so, love always burned through his darkness eventually, nakedly innocent and hopeful. And sometimes when he looked at her, Rose thought she could feel the force of his love focussed on her single-mindedly and ripe with passion.

For an eternity Rose watched the Time Lord. For an eternity she ached to run to him, throw her arms around him and burrow inside his jacket, to feel his arms tighten around her and the comforting weight of his chin perched on the crown of her head. Feel the scratch of wool against her face, and enfold herself in the cool, erotically fragrant, uniquely _him_ of him. She'd dare his certain disappointment, maybe even ire. She'd see and raise his fear for the integrity of their time line's future with the utter loneliness of hers.

Oh, he'd pull a stroppy face and glower at her, cross his arms over his chest, sink into his leather armour and an adolescent sulk. He'd mutter about time lines twisted into pretzels by stupid apes drowning in domesticity and sentimentality.

And that was so Doctor that Rose could see it; she could hear the strong northern imprint, the cadence and the attitude as if he'd just said it aloud. She slammed a hand over her mouth to stifle a fit of giggles, maybe a fit of sobbing.

But oh, to actually hear! Even to be the focus of his keen explosive anger and quick forgiveness… _just say you're sorry_ … Wouldn't she dare just about anything even? It didn't have to end in calamity, did it, just to hold him and tell him he wouldn't always be alone, he would always be loved?

Wouldn't she dare to inform him cheekily that since he'd no doubt block out this memory, she was going to make it something monumentally, Earth-movingly, time-shatteringly traumatic to forget, something his entire body would desperately wish to remember. Then she'd pull him down by his ears and kiss him until his knees buckled and he could do no more than whisper her name over and over.

 

 

The Doctor stood up, adjusted the large gold and silver bow that was really perfect already, tilted his head to review his handiwork. With an immensely satisfied grin he petted the red bike.

"Now don't you fall off, Rose Tyler; that's an order! Look both ways before you head into traffic. You are a jeopardy-friendly one, you are, and you're going to need some serious looking-after from me."

He made a face that felt both grin and grimace, shook his head slowly. "But not for a while, my girl; for a while it's still on your mum and you. Look after each other until I find you when you're properly my jeopardy-friendly Rose Tyler, and then we'll look after each other for as long as your fingers wrap through mine and you let your hand hold—" He looked back through the time line, watched a rerun of his life since Rose Tyler had taken his hand. "Ah, my dear miraculous little human, do you know that your hand will hold together whatever good and hopeful survived in a soul thoroughly beaten by life?"  He laughed almost once and almost aloud. "And bloody sick of the charade."

Wiping his palms on his jeans, the Doctor peered around Rose Tyler's flat, meaning to memorize it. He chuckled at the notoriously fragile coffee table, leaned down and nicked a cookie. His eyes were ineluctably drawn toward Rose's bedroom, his thoughts to the human girl asleep and dreaming, his mind to the fantastic young woman he knew. His care-worn face eased into a kind of peacefulness and he smiled softly as visions of something other than sugarplums danced through his head. His eyes grew bright and full and he found himself choking back quiet laughter that was almost something else.

"I love you, Rose Tyler," he whispered, "I'll always love you."

 

 

Rose might not have heard the Time Lord if she hadn't been so tuned still and always to her first Doctor's voice. But she did. And she was sure that the TARDIS sang and the Earth danced a jig beneath her feet, and the cosmos began to breathe again. The words _Bad Wolf_ popped into her head, and _blimey_ wasn't that as good an excuse as any for leaping heart-first into a storm and letting herself reply! "I love you too, Doctor, I'll always love you."

The Doctor spun on his heels with a look that made Rose want to both laugh with delight and rush over to tell him she was sorry. She stepped out of the shadow of the TARDIS, into the flat's flittering candlelight.

The Time Lord understood immediately—he caught the look of Rose Tyler's maturity, a taste of her years, the mantle of experience and time and life that enfolded her, and a golden potency that was both subtle and luminous. He froze. His sharp gaze pierced the distance between them, determined not to perceive all that a Time Lord daren't let himself look for. The claws of paradox's marvellous and terrible unknowns snatched at his brain and his legs. The Doctor stumbled away from Rose Tyler's future bodily, taking halting steps back as he closed off his time sense.

But his hearts— his hearts marvelled at the transformation. His gaze caressed the woman's face and body the way his arms and lips suddenly hungered to. He delighted in the maturity that Rose's nineteen-year-old curves had resolved into and showed it with a broad smile, though he reasoned a thousand things his mouth would rather do. He almost licked his lips at the ideas in his head and couldn’t' find it in himself to feel any guilt.

"Father Christmas," Rose said conversationally as she walked to the Doctor. "Red bicycle. That'd make me twelve years old."

"Rose," the Doctor whispered, "why—how—what did you—"

Rose shook her head. "Reapers, I know. I'm being very careful, Doctor. Promise."

"How do you know about Reapers?"

That stopped Rose mid-stride; she had assumed that the Doctor had travelled back just after they picked up Jack, to make good his boast while the humans slept. "Doctor, when is this for us, exactly?"

"You said no."

"Just after the Nestene and the Autons?"

"Your stupid lump of a boyfriend called me a _thing_ " he added with a brittle sharpness, not even trying to hide the vivid, pressing hurt. Rose Tyler reached out to cup his cheek, and without even thinking, he started to lean into her warm tenderness. He stopped himself immediately. Time paradox be damned—the pain and humiliation, so new, so raw, was reason enough.

"Doctor, why are you here now?"

"Could ask you the same, Rose Tyler."

But he wouldn't, Rose knew; it was too dangerous. "Doctor," she asked with soft intensity.

The Doctor exhaled slowly, giving up his anger and hurt, and gave in to the force of Nature that was Rose Tyler. "I heard you under the Eye when I was arguing with the Nestene consciousness, when the Autons had me. You said you had no A levels, no future. You said all you had was your gymnastics bronze medal—" He grinned quickly. "—Which I can tell you was a big deal to me right then."

He studied the human woman. Rose Tyler, grown up. A self-assured, stunning, somewhat later version of the fantastic companion he knew the version not quite out of her teens had it in her to become. He smiled. It wasn't the wacky grin that left people off-balance and didn't invite further dialogue, but his real smile.

"A levels count on paper and in job interviews; but Rose, you have so much more, you _are_ so much more. I offered you one possible future, but it's your choice whether to run to it or back away." Rose worried her bottom lip and looked away, and the Doctor wondered if she was thinking about why she had just turned him down… that is, had turned him down that night those many years, for her, ago.

He hadn't meant to hurt her. "I just wanted to give you something nice and not too scary, Rose, something that would make you happy." He shrugged a shoulder, a little bit embarrassed by the admission, more than a little bit flustered by the way she was looking at him, and continued quickly. "To thank you, you know; so you would have something more to look back on happily."

"Didn't you worry it could change what happened," Rose asked curiously. "I mean, maybe I wouldn't be willing to swing over the Nestene for you—I mean, maybe I wouldn't have needed to do it to prove something to myself."

"That's not why you did it, Rose."

"This is a horrible risk!"

"Nah; I had a trick or two up my sleeve. I would have gotten us out, no matter—genius, remember. Even if this changes anything, Rose, I'll still know everything that happened in the original time line. I'll know that you saved me before I saved you. However, in the totally unlikely event that you are right and I am not, I'm not above telling you right now that it's a lot more fun actually catching you swinging into me." He grinned at Rose again, and she gave him the smile he knew he was going to live on through the rest of his lives.

"Thank you for the bike, Doctor." Moving quickly before the Doctor could figure what she was up to and stop her, Rose caught hold of his shoulder and pushed up onto her toes to kiss his cheek.

Rose's lips touched the Doctor's cheek as she balanced precariously, their bodies joined but not. His hand moved to her hip, only to steady her. Rose brought her lips against his, tenderly compelling; the Doctor's lips breathed apart and his tongue edged out to taste her. Her body melted into his, soft and willing. The Doctor's hand slipped around Rose's waist, his other cupped the back of her head. Together they turned Rose Tyler's invitation and the Doctor's tentative reply into an avowal. And it felt right, so right, for the both of them.

The Doctor's time sense jolted. A reasonably straight line lurched sideways and veered off in a trajectory he could barely follow. Something burned across his Time Lord senses, in the back of his throat and his hearts. Rose pulled back; not out of his embrace, only enough to look into his eyes. They blazed at her for a second, then his gaze dropped to the big weapony-looking thing she held at her side.

"My mascara case," Rose said.

"Ah." The Doctor grinned. "That explains a lot."

"Oi!" Though he'd always made jokes about her eye make-up, Rose knew how clever and quick he truly was, and how strong. If he pushed it… if he decided to take the dimension cannon from her and study it, she wouldn't be able to stop him, and it could change the future. And if he searched her and found the _Skinny Martian_ —her husband's daft-named metacrisis neural syzygizer, born of his intact Gallifreyan knowledge and new human ingenuity, bits and bobs from Torchwood's alien artefacts museum, and the brain from her dad's £7,500 coffee machine — it could make this primary time line look like Henricks the morning after. Dare she trust the Doctor's sensitivity for preserving temporal integrity to rein in his boundless, jeopardy-courting curiosity?

She should get out of there, now.

She should stay. The feel of his leather jacket in her hands was so right.

The feel of his arms around her and her breasts crushed against him was right oh so right was heaven was _fantastic_.

"Rose…"

Rose looked up, and the Doctor's eyes bore into her soul and played the same havoc with her heart they'd done so many years ago. His unforgettable scent inundated her. To nineteen-year-old Rose it had been something of an aphrodisiac. It was even more so to her now. Rose burned for him. She thought again about what she'd considered doing as she'd watched him polish her bike. Why couldn't she give the Doctor and her just a simple, inconsequential-to-the-Universe, non-Reality-altering bit of time? Whatever the Time Lord did with the memory—or even the time itself—it would be up to him.

So many complicated questions filled the Doctor's head that a part of him decided that a less impressive brain would explode from it all plus the staggering number of facts fighting for attention and alternative realities to be juggled and weighed. But the impressive Time Lord's head spun and his mind reeled beneath the weight of one simple, inescapable, unquestionable fact.

Rose Tyler.

He would wager that no brain was impressive enough not to be thrown off-kilter. Rose's nearness, her warmth, her softness. And her scent, the same as the Rose he'd just left, yet curiously not. He took a second to identify the difference and he grew hard. This Rose Tyler wanted him, and she was shouting it with all of her except her vocal chords.

Rose knew about Reapers. The Doctor refused to think about _that_ except to decide that Rose understood about being careful. He had a sudden hope that if he was also careful— and he could be very careful when he wanted to — he could keep anything that might happen between him and adult Rose Tyler irrelevant to the time line. Rose's teeth caught his earlobe and tugged lightly, then nibbled down his jaw, and he suddenly was desperate not to forget what he was certain was about to happen. He only had to make sure Rose didn't say anything that could compromise the time line; and from the way her hands had slipped up his shoulders and her fingers were caressing his neck and playing through his hair, the way she'd just nipped at his chin and was staring at his mouth, he decided all-grown-up Rose Tyler had something other than catch-up conversation on her mind. He pressed a compelling heat into Rose's pliant softness.

Rose's body thrilled. The Doctor's erection pressed against her, and juddering waves of pleasure rushed all the way into her toes and fingers, into her throat, even into her ears and eyelids; and it was so much more intense, so much better than anything the teen in the TARDIS had daydreamed! There was no way this should be anything less than the start of a beginning—

But why didn't the Doctor feel it too? They'd barely begun and already he was moving back, putting space between them. He gave her that friggin' _I shouldn’t have, I'm not worthy_ guilty look and she rolled her eyes. She stretched up to him again, wrapping her leg around his in case he freaked out again.

The Doctor's eyes followed Rose Tyler's body as she moved up onto her toes, obliterating the height and strength disparity with a smirk and a long well-shaped leg. He felt Rose's lips brush the underside of his jaw, tender and unquestionably erotic over his sensitive skin. He felt her tongue and teeth tasting him as she methodically moved down his throat and over his sternum, finding every centimetre of naked skin exposed in the V of his jumper. Her hands had found their way inside his jumper—huh?!—and every neuron in his nervous system cheered as Rose Tyler's nails glided lightly over his shoulders and chest. He could feel Rose's body against his, and its unambiguous, honest physical responses to full contact. Rose shivered again, her tremors encouraging his. She sighed and rubbed against him. She hadn't let go of him, so he had no choice but to hold her, had he? He held her, no space between them and no obstacle but some insignificant pieces of cloth, and he was the one shivering and Rose was the one who didn't stop wouldn't stop, didn't let him go, didn't let him run away. Eventually he did move her—her two feet solidly on the floor, he stepped back, slipped his hands into his jacket pockets, and looked into Rose's eyes.

"How long?"

"Tonight."

He opened his arms and found Rose within them in a blink. Her body molded to his and she snaked her arms inside his jumper. As if this was all natural and routine for them, Rose slipped one hand inside his jeans to rest on a bum cheek. Her other hand slid up his back; and as if they were longtime lovers, her fingers grazed and stroked every single particularly sensitive place on his body between his hipbones and the crown of his head. Her intentions were decidedly lascivious and her knowledge of Gallifreyan erogenous zones surprisingly thorough, She was his Rose, then? Apparently. _I have some catching up to do_ , he thought, and couldn't remember the last time he'd looked forward to the _travails_ of finding all the details he'd missed with such joy.

_My Rose_. The thought should have terrified the Time Lord. It didn't. _I begin where she leaves off_ , he thought; _no, I start just where she is—with the feel of her, the soft, scented, confident, fantastic feel of her_.

When Rose began to push his jumper up, the Doctor stopped her. It wouldn't do to have either the child or her mum catch them, he cautioned as he moved them out of sight of the bedrooms.

Rose slipped out of the Doctor's arms. She walked to the perception-shielded TARDIS. Turning to the Time Lord with a grin, she extended her hand to him. Her TARDIS key lay on her palm.

The Doctor wondered barely a moment then smiled at all the fantastic implications his quick mind and willing hearts supplied. He came to the TARDIS… came to Rose Tyler, accepted the key and kissed her palm. Rose wove her fingers through his, and it felt if possible even more right than yesterday in Henricks or during today's feverish run across the bridge. He felt it all again: the turn of the Earth, the measured respiration of the Universe, the easy sigh of his soul. He unlocked the door. Rose led him into his ship. He led her to his room.

 

~

 

"I'm going to feel like a dirty old man when I go back for you, Rose Tyler!" Rose had been sprawled over him for several minutes, completely relaxed except for that part of her that gloved that piece of him that the Doctor was sure she had magicked along with his hearts and his brain. After their fantastic shagging he had kept himself hard and ready, which was a no-brainer, literally, a bloke thing at least as much as a Time Lord trick what with the way Rose could keep herself so tight and hot around him. He also had been experiencing a strange and unfamiliar sensation that might actually be contentment, but was afraid to look at too closely lest it disappear. Rose sat up, easily keeping him snug and hard and happily inside her, and gave him a look that made him judder and, somehow, harden even more.

Rose looked down at the Doctor—smiling and happy beneath her, his eyes untroubled and his worry lines lost to contentment— and tried to sound stern. "Well, it serves you right for being so gorgeous and hot and making me feel like an oversexed barely in control teenager around you." She giggled at the look on the Time Lord's face. "Okay, look; when you find yourself getting dirty feelings, ring me up; the TARDIS has my current number. We can, you know…" She contracted her muscles and the Doctor whimpered. She held them so, and grinned. "You know."

"You planning on sticking around here-now, Rose," the Doctor asked in an only mildly interested voice once his respiratory bypass eased up and he blinked his eyes open and his brain was able to think about something other than flipping the woman off of him, getting that fantastically aching organ of his through Rose's pouty full lips, past her devil tongue, and into her wet hot mouth; and driving his own tongue deep inside her with a force and technique that would keep her screaming for him and her god, though mostly for him.

"I'm going to look up an old friend, but the TARDIS will be able to find me."

"I guess I can drop young you off to see—"

"Mickey?"

"Rose Tyler, don't you swear at me when we're in bed together like this and it's our first time…at..at least it's my our first time… or I won't keep myself hard through to Christmas Day, and you won't lose your voice from shouting and the use of your legs from coming so hard and so many times around me that at least one of us will lose count. I was about to say your mum, and this you may be the only reason I'd walk with that you back into the she-lion's den. Tell me when I'm going to make you feel like an oversexed teenager. It won't alter the time line; I just figure I should be … prepared."

"The first time it happened—"

"Yeah? _First_ time, eh?" He smirked. Rose inclined herself toward him—a move which made his toes and fingers curl—pushed her elbows into his ribs, supported her chin on her hands, grinned across his chest at him, and swizzled her hips. He groaned, caught her bum in his hands, and held her stationary. Rose Tyler gifted him with a smug self-satisfied smile. That woman knew what she was doing to him. It was good... it was fantastic. "First time—" he urged, with a sharp thrust up and his own smug smile.

"We were in Henricks' elevator, you were playing with that stupid plastic arm and ignoring me. I could see the shape of most of your bum despite the jacket; pictured the rest of it clearly, I did. You turned your head to glare at me. Your armour isn't as sturdy as you think, Doctor. I could see the muscles of your bum and legs tense up; and the ones down your shoulders and back flirted shamelessly with me."

"Rose, that was right after we met."

"Yep. I wanted to see you do that naked. Actually, I wanted to strip your clothes off, myself; watch them flex and twist and stretch in all their magnificent naked glory, yeah, and then of course I'd have a go at it."

"Have a go at what?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "The second time was when you pushed me out the door with a terrible lie about maybe dying in the explosion."

"Wasn't a lie," the Doctor mumbled gruffly, quietly but not quietly enough.

"I realized that later, Doctor. At the time I just thought you were trying to impress me with your bravery."

"Hadn't really been thinking about impressing you at that moment, just was stating a fact. Could've gone either way."

"I know. I think the way it went… that was just about the bravest thing someone could do, considering." She caressed his cheek.

The Doctor understood how much this Rose knew. "Asking you to come with me was bloody brave, human."

"Asking me again was… will be bloody impressive, Time Lord." She wrapped her hands around the Doctor's arms. Her thumbs circled over the sensitive skin on the inside of his elbows, making him tremble. She glided her fingers up the swell of muscle in his arms to his shoulders thence across the naked expanse of chest and stomach. Stretching back, she skittered her nails up and down his thighs, behind his knees… everywhere she could reach without moving off him completely. The Doctor's eyes were fixed on hers, and Rose felt so very content, watching her beautiful Time Lord smile.

The Doctor watched Rose's face, taking as much delight in looking at her as in the feel of all the erotic things she was doing to him high and low and fantastically in-between. But the woman made it way too easy to give up everything but pure sensation. Soon, with a long enthralled moan he closed his eyes, lolled his head back into the pillow, and lost himself to Rose's deft fingers and tight undulating caress. His eyes flew open a few minutes later, though, when Rose pinched his nipples and bore down hard around him. His body shot up as his hips jerked forward and left the bed, and he rammed up into Rose with a cry that eclipsed hers. His hands came down hard and he grabbed at the sheets—probably the only thing that kept them both from being sent into orbit. He found himself sitting up on the bed with Rose in his lap trembling and panting, her arms wrapped around his neck constrictively but her legs limp and useless around him. She was still thoroughly impaled on him. He kissed the top of her head and gave her a huge grin.

"Supernova," she finally gasped.

"More like the big bang, Rose Tyler. The afterglow just may set a record in every spectrum." Rose actually blushed. She was so bloody cute! He simply had to kiss her again. "I think we just impressed the hell out of each other."

"Better with two," she giggled, and the Doctor rolled his eyes.

He rolled them back down on the bed, eased his softening penis out of her and brought her body against him. He tucked her head under his chin and cradled her as their bodies began to calm.

Tipping her head slightly, Rose kissed the Doctor's jaw. With a bit more movement she was able to reach his shoulder, dotting it with gentle kisses, then brushed her lips through the sweaty sweetness puddled in the hollows above his clavicles. With a sigh and a couple more kisses, Rose gave herself over to the feel and taste and scent of him.

Rose's fingers began to drift down the Doctor's torso. He took them up, kissed each fingertip, then placed Rose's hand onto his chest over one of his hearts. "Stay." Rose giggled. "I mean it, Rose Tyler." He held her in a brook-no-nonsense embrace, a leg immobilizing hers, an arm around her waist, and her head firmly held beneath his chin with her face trapped between his palm and his throat, and her lips unable to cause him any more trouble—at least until he got back control of himself.

Rose felt the Doctor's thundering double pulse begin to return to normal. The thrumming of his heart beneath her palm was content though definitely not sleepy. His superior Time Lord physiology was coming down from overpowering arousal and orgasm but still more than a little inclined to another go. He was so vital. So alive. _Alive. Alive_. Rose froze. For just one barely noticeable, hardly worth mentioning, monumentally significant moment Rose froze. Froze against the Doctor, her breath arrested by his pulse's resounding throb. Froze with her fingers rigid and cold over his resolute heartbeats. With the roar of his blood a song… no, an aria filling her mind _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

At first the Doctor thought Rose had become fascinated with his twinned pulse, but how could she not have felt it before? He caught her chin, moving them so that he could look at her. Rose's eyes whispered of a place somewhat mad she had known.

"Rose?"

The word was eloquent and ripe with substance. There were even more questions in the Doctor's gaze than in his voice. Rose smiled tremulously. "Forgot about that respiratory bypass, didya Doctor?" she quipped, her tongue tip peeking through a grin she put everything teasing and sexy and  _I'm okay you're okay_ into. Would it be fear for temporal integrity or plain old Doctor curiosity that might muck this up? Oh please oh please no questions she shouldn't answer!

The Doctor was about to ask Rose what was wrong when he felt her lips against his throat. As she licked and nipped and sucked at his pulse point, her fingers glided over still very responsive areas on his chest and around his navel, scraped along the hollow of his pelvis, then caressed his softening member—all quite tenderly, teasingly, sensually fantastic; all with the intention, he didn’t doubt, to defeat all higher brain function in him.

He couldn't remember ever being so responsive to a simple touch, a light tug on his chest hair, fingertips whispering across a nipple and planing over his ribs and hips. He couldn’t remember ever falling so fast or so hard, or being so completely in love. Until he'd taken Rose's hand in Henricks, he couldn't even remember when he'd last felt anything but desperation, or believed in anything but the finality that was just out of reach. Beneath Rose's lips, a frenzy of life surged through him again. Rose Tyler had called it up; shouldn't that life be Rose's to command for the rest of hers?

Whatever had shaken Rose so wasn't for him yet if ever to know, he decided; just as he had earlier decided not ever to search for a reason why his ship had begun to hum a new melody when Rose stroked the console. Instead, he concentrated on the depth of love he'd seen in Rose's eyes and felt in her touch... the way her body fit to his as perfectly, as rightly, as her hand, their legs and arms entwining just as effortlessly as their fingers… the way their hips and pelvises and lips in joining made a congruent whole.  The way he moved within her as if the cosmos had fashioned him to love her. Time had brought Rose Tyler to him. Tonight, that was all the reason he wanted. In a sudden movement he nipped her nose.

"I love you," the Doctor said to Rose simply, words this Time Lord hadn't quite been able to say in 10 Downing and when he'd let the Dalek free. It told her everything. 

"I'm yours, always," Rose replied. That was really the only thing he cared to know. 

Rose rolled onto her back, pulling the Doctor over her. Their lips met, opened. Their tongues coupled. The Doctor's mouth devoured Rose's as his body moved to devour and be devoured by hers again. They didn't think about the future, they didn't let themselves worry or conspire or fantasize. What they knew, all they were certain of, was they had Christmas Eve. They would make the best of every moment, making love so many times at least one of them lost count. 

They had this Christmas Eve. 

They also had the TARDIS.

 

   

 

 

 

 


End file.
